IT businesses and franchising: a research proposal

Author

Chen, Ye-Sho ; Okoli, Chitu ; Chong, P. Pete

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. Syst. & Decision Sci., Louisiana State Univ., USA

fYear

2003

fDate

6-9 Jan. 2003

Abstract

Franchising has been popular as a growth strategy for small businesses; it is even more so in today´s global and information-based economy. In early 2001, Entrepreneur magazine-well known for its Franchise 500 listing-added a tech businesses category to its franchise zone with three subcategories: Internet businesses, tech training, and miscellaneous tech businesses. This study applies Herbert Simon´s model for business firm growth as a theory-grounded solution to help managers understand the growth dynamics of IT-based franchising businesses. We present a research proposal with a pilot study of the growth of 27 IT-based franchise businesses, and explain how to relate the parameters of Simon´s model to strategic variables that can give managers a valuable strategic tool to understand the context of their industrial competition in IT-based franchising.

Keywords

Internet; economics; franchising; information technology; Entrepreneur magazine; Herbert Simon model; IT businesses; IT growth dynamics; IT-based franchising; Internet businesses; business firm growth; franchise zone; global economy; growth strategy; industrial competition; information-based economy; miscellaneous tech businesses; small businesses; strategic tool; strategic variables; tech training; theory-grounded solution; Companies; Context modeling; Educational institutions; Finance; Information systems; Internet; Management training; Proposals; Technological innovation; Telecommunication computing;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1874-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.2003.1174779

Filename

1174779